This is the first in a new series of monthly blogs which will focus on a single project. The goal isn't to bore you with technical jargon and geeky details. Let's face it, you would get bored. Quickly. My goal is to provide you with insight into what happens when someone has an idea for a new digital platform and what goes into making it a reality.
A lot goes into developing a new platform before it’s ready for general use by a company’s customers. What information the application will generate and the structure it is stored in are just a couple of the puzzle pieces. In order to determine that, you first need to understand what that information is and what you need to know about each category of information. This starts with a mind map (or whatever tool you find is best to start laying out the categories of information and how they relate). What you generate here will ultimately help a developer determine how to structure the database - the storage container for all the information - from users to subscription information to the data entered by the users themselves.
Here’s a part sample mapping I created, which shows just one piece of an application which requires users to log in via password and see information based on their role in the system.
This is just part of the puzzle. There’s additional information which is needed, including information about companies, their associates, and answers to various forms required for compliance audits.
Now that we have an idea of the information we need to store, the next step is to determine how users interact with the application to generate that data. We'll dig into that next month.
